Washington DC - One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific ?consensus? on climate alarmism.

Claude Allegre, a former government official and an active member of France?s Socialist Party, wrote an editorial on September 21, 2006 in the French newspaper L'Express titled ?The Snows of Kilimanjaro? (For English Translation, click here: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 ) detailing his newfound skepticism about manmade global warming. See: http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 Allegre wrote that the ?cause of climate change remains unknown? and pointed out that Kilimanjaro is not losing snow due to global warming, but to local land use and precipitation changes. Allegre also pointed out that studies show that Antarctic snowfall rate has been stable over the past 30 years and the continent is actually gaining ice.

?Following the month of August experienced by the northern half of France, the prophets of doom of global warming will have a lot on their plate in order to make our fellow countrymen swallow their certitudes,? Allegre wrote. He also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that ?the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!?

Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled ?World Scientists' Warning to Humanity? in which the scientists warned that global warming?s ?potential risks are very great.? See: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/sciwarn.html

Allegre has authored more than 100 scientific articles, written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States.

Allegre's conversion to a climate skeptic comes at a time when global warming alarmists have insisted that there is a ?consensus? about manmade global warming. Proponents of global warming have ratcheted up the level of rhetoric on climate skeptics recently. An environmental magazine in September called for Nuremberg-style trials for global warming skeptics and CBS News ?60 Minutes? correspondent Scott Pelley compared skeptics to ?Holocaust deniers.? See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568 & http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/03/22/publiceye/entry1431768.shtml In addition, former Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers."

This increase in rhetorical flourish comes at a time when new climate science research continues to unravel the global warming alarmists? computer model predictions of future climatic doom and vindicate skeptics.

60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears

Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called ?consensus? that the Earth faces a ?climate emergency.? On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.

?Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future?Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary,? the 60 scientists wrote. See: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

?It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas,? the 60 scientists concluded.

In addition, an October 16, 2006 Washington Post article titled ?Climate Change is Nothing New? echoed the sentiments of the 60 scientists as it detailed a new study of the earth?s climate history. The Washington Post article by reporter Christopher Lee noted that Indiana University geologist Simon Brassell found climate change occurred during the age of dinosaurs and quoted Brassell questioning the accuracy of computer climate model predictions.

In August, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun?s output. See: http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/53143686.html

Sun?s Contribution to Warming

There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml

?Global Warming? Stopped in 1998

Paleoclimate scientist Bob Carter has noted that there is indeed a problem with global warming ? it stopped in 1998. ?According to official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the global average temperature did not increase between 1998-2005. ??this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,? noted paleoclimate researcher and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia in an April 2006 article titled ?There is a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.? See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

?Global?? Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming

In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to ?global warming theory? and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word ?global? in ?global warming? may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be ?Northern Hemisphere? warming. See: http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/southern-hemisphere-ignores-global.html

Another bombshell to hit the global warming alarmists and their speculative climate modeling came in a September article in the Geophysical Research Letters which found that over 20% of the heat gained in the oceans since the mid-1950s was lost in just two years. The former climatologist for the state of Colorado, Roger Pielke, Sr., noted that the sudden cooling of the oceans ?certainly indicates that the multi-decadal global climate models have serious issues with their ability to accurately simulate the response of the climate system to human- and natural-climate forcings.? See: http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/09/

Light Hurricane Season & Early Winter

Despite predictions that 2006 would bring numerous tropical storms, 2006?s surprisingly light hurricane season and the record early start of this year?s winter in many parts of the U.S. have further put a damper on the constant doomsaying of the global warming alarmists and their media allies.

Droughts Less Frequent

Other new studies have debunked many of the dubious claims made by the global warming alarmists. For example, the claim that droughts would be more frequent, severe and wide ranging during global warming, has now being exposed as fallacious. A new paper in Geophysical Research Letters authored by Konstantinos Andreadis and Dennis Lettenmaier finds droughts in the U.S. becoming ?shorter, less frequent and cover a small portion of the country over the last century.? http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/where-are-the-droughts

Global Warming Will Not Lead to Next Ice Age

Furthermore, recent research has shown that fears that global warming could lead to the next ice age, as promoted in the 2004 Hollywood movie ?The Day After Tomorrow? are also unsupportable. A 2005 media hyped study ?claimed to have found a 30 percent slowdown in the thermohaline circulation, the results are published in the very prestigious Nature magazine, and the story was carried breathlessly by the media in outlets around the world?Less than a year later, two different research teams present convincing evidence [ in Geophysical Research Letters ] that no slowdown is occurring whatsoever,? according to Virginia State Climatologist Patrick Michaels, editor of the website World Climate Report. See: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/10/13/overturning-ocean-hype

A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. See: http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N44/C1.jsp that Also, according to the International Arctic Research Institute, despite all of the media hype, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930?s than today.

The global warming alarmists may have significantly overplayed their hand in the climate debate. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll this August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of any recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50% in the last five years.

Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, commented last week on the media?s unfounded global warming hype and some of the recent scientific research that is shattering the so-called ?consensus? that human greenhouse gas emissions have doomed the planet.

?The American people are fed up with media for promoting the idea that former Vice President Al Gore represents the scientific ?consensus? that SUV?s and the modern American way of life have somehow created a ?climate emergency? that only United Nations bureaucrats and wealthy Hollywood liberals can solve. It is the publicity and grant seeking global warming alarmists and their advocates in the media who have finally realized that the only ?emergency? confronting them is their rapidly crumbling credibility, audience and bottom line. The global warming alarmists know their science is speculative at best and their desperation grows each day as it becomes more and more obvious that many of the nations that ratified the woeful Kyoto Protocol are failing to comply,? Senator Inhofe said last week. See: http://www.epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264616

?The mainstream media needs to follow the money: The further you get from scientists who conduct these alarmist global warming studies, and the further you get from the financial grants and the institutions that they serve the more the climate alarmism fades and the skepticism grows,? Senator Inhofe explained.

Eco-Doomsayers? Failed Predictions

In a speech on the Senate floor on September 25, 2006, Senator Inhofe pointed out the abject failure of past predictions of ecological disaster made by environmental alarmists.

?The history of the modern environmental movement is chock-full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet it never stopped the doomsayers from continuing to predict a dire environmental future. The more the eco-doomsayers? predictions fail, the more the eco-doomsayers predict,? Senator Inhofe said on September 25th. See: http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

Related Links:

For a comprehensive review of the media?s embarrassing 100-year history of alternating between promoting fears of a coming ice age and global warming, see Environment & Public Works Chairman James Inhofe?s September 25, 2006 Senate floor speech debunking the media and climate alarmism. Go to: (epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759)

?Inhofe Correct On Global Warming,? by David Deming geophysicist, an adjunct scholar with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (ocpathink.org), and an associate professor of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. (http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264537)

This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, a monster about the size of North America and Argentina combined, scientists in Boulder and at NASA said Thursday.Unusually cold Antarctic winter and spring weather - not a sudden surge in the level of man-made, ozone-destroying chemicals high in the atmosphere - are being blamed for the record-setter, researchers said.

The ozone hole forms high over Antarctica each September. Low temperatures accelerate chemical reactions that allow ozone-munching chlorine and bromine compounds to devour parts of the layer, which shields Earth from ultraviolet rays that can cause skin cancer and cataracts.

Late last month - the start of spring in the Southern Hemisphere - temperatures in the lower stratosphere over parts of Antarctica were 9 degrees lower than average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

"This has been an extremely cold year in the Antarctic, and as a result of that, the chemistry that drives ozone loss has operated remarkably efficiently and has made a very big, very deep hole," said Susan Solomon, a NOAA atmospheric scientist in Boulder.

"What this does not mean is that the Montreal Protocol isn't working, or anything silly like that," Solomon said.

The 1987 international treaty banned production and importation of ozone-destroying chemicals - mainly compounds that contain chlorine and bromine - in the developed world.

As a direct result of the ban, the extent of the annual Antarctic ozone hole began to level off in the late 1990s, scientists said.

But year-to-year climate variability still results in big jumps or dips in the size of the ozone hole.

The 2006 Antarctic ozone hole peaked in late September at 10.6 million square miles in area, surpassing 2003 (10.5 million square miles) to become the new title-holder, NASA atmospheric scientist Paul Newman said.

By Oct. 9, nearly all of the ozone in the layer between eight and 13 miles directly over the South Pole was gone, said David Hofmann, director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division in Boulder.

"It just kept eating away, more and more, until we saw a region of zero ozone with our balloon measurements down at the South Pole," Hofmann said. "The result was that more ozone, by mass, was destroyed this year than ever before. It broke all records."

But the year-to-year fluctuations can swing in the opposite direction, too. In 2002, the ozone hole's size dropped to 3.7 million square miles.

"In the years to come, I think we'll see some years that will have big, deep holes and years that have slightly less deep holes," said Solomon, who, with her colleagues, is credited with explaining the causes of the Antarctic ozone hole.

"And eventually, we'll start to see a systematic trend toward progressively smaller and less deep holes, but that won't happen for quite a number of years," she said.

Levels of ozone-destroying gases peaked over the Antarctic in 2001 and began a slow decline, according to NOAA. But those chemicals persist in the atmosphere for decades, and a measurable recovery of the Antarctic ozone layer isn't expected to begin until about 2017, Newman said.

Until recently, some scientists had predicted full recovery by 2050. Now researchers such as Boulder's Dale Hurst say that 2065 is a better bet.

The delayed recovery can be blamed in part on unexpectedly high levels of ozone-destroying chemicals still being emitted in the U.S., Canada and other developed countries, said Hurst, who works at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.

The sources likely include aging refrigerators, air conditioners and fire extinguishers that contain now-banned substances, he said.

Chlorine-containing chlorofluorocarbons had been used as refrigerants and propellants - in aerosol sprays and other products - since the 1930s. Bromine-containing halons were used in fire extinguishers.

Britain?s Royal Society has demanded that ExxonMobil stop funding researchers who say global warming is primarily the result of natural forces. Meanwhile, scientist James Hansen received $250,000 from Teresa Heinz-Kerry for insisting that warming is due to humans, and ?socially responsible? investor services refuse to list or recommend corporations they deem insufficiently sensitive on the subject.

Not surprisingly, companies from Wal-Mart to BP, GE and JP Morgan have brought climate activists into their board rooms, lobbied Congress for climate and ethanol legislation, and retooled to produce new product lines intended to boost tax subsidies, favorable PR and profits.

But are these actions socially responsible or in the best interests of society as a whole?

Vikings raised crops and cattle in Greenland 1000 years ago, while Britons grew grapes in England. Four hundred years later, the Vikings were frozen out, Europe was gripped in a Little Ice Age, and priests performed exorcisms on advancing Swiss glaciers. The globe warmed in 1850-1940, cooled for the next 35 years, then warmed slightly again.

Detroit experienced six snowstorms in April 1868, frosts in August 1869, a 98-degree heat wave in June 1874, and ice-free lakes in January 1877. Wisconsin?s record high of 114 degrees F in July 1936 was followed five years later by a record July low of 46. In 1980, five years after Newsweek?s ?new little ice age? cover story, Washington, DC endured 67 days above 90 degrees.

Studies by National Academy of Sciences, NOAA, Danish and other scientists continue to raise inconvenient truths that question and contradict catastrophic climate change theories, computer models and assertions. The ?hockey stick? temperature graph (which claimed 1990-2000 was the hottest decade in 1000 years) was shown to be invalid; the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years; the US is yet to be hit by a major hurricane in 2006; interior Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice mass, not losing it; and Gulf Stream circulation has not slowed, as claimed in 2005.

Why would we assume (as many climate models do) that energy, transportation and pollution control technologies will suddenly stagnate at 2000 levels, after the amazing advances of the previous century? And can we afford the Quixotic attempt to stall or prevent future climate change?

Just the current Kyoto Protocol could cost the world up to $1 trillion per year, in regulatory bills, higher energy costs and lost productivity. That?s several times more than the price tag for providing the world with clean drinking water and sanitation ? which would prevent millions of deaths annually from intestinal diseases.

Over 2 billion of the Earth?s citizens still do not have electricity, to provide basic necessities like lights, refrigeration and modern hospitals. Instead they breathe polluted smoke from wood and dung fires, and die by the millions from lung diseases. But opposition to fossil fuel power plants, in the name of preventing climate change, ensures that these ?indigenous? lifestyles, diseases and deaths will continue.

Opposition to hydroelectric projects (damming rivers) and nuclear power (radioactive wastes) likewise perpetuates endemic Third World poverty. So would a new European Union proposal to tax imports from China, India and other poor countries that are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol, because this gives them an ?unfair trade advantage? over EU countries that are struggling to meet their Kyoto #1 commitments.

But UK Climate Change Minister Ian Pearson insists that climate change ?is one of the most pressing issues facing countries in sub-Saharan Africa.? And environmental zealots blame malaria rates on climate change, to deflect charges that their callous opposition to insecticides is killing African babies.

Elsewhere, government and private studies calculate that the Protocol would cost the United States up to $348 billion in 2012. The average American family of four would pay an extra $2,700 annually for energy and consumer goods, and in US minority communities, the climate treaty would destroy 1.3 million jobs and ?substantially affect? standards of living.

Yet, even perfect compliance with Kyoto would result in Earth?s temperature being only 0.2 degrees F less by 2050 than under a business-as-usual scenario. Assuming humans really are the culprits, actually controlling theoretical global temperature increases would require 40 Kyoto treaties ? each one more restrictive, each one expanding government control over housing, transportation, heating, cooling and manufacturing decisions.

The real danger is that we will handcuff economies and hammer poor families, to promote solutions which won?t solve a problem that the evidence increasingly suggests is moderate, manageable and primarily natural in origin.

The real catastrophe is that we are already using overwrought claims about a climate cataclysm to justify depriving Earth?s most impoverished citizens of electricity and other modern technologies that would make their lives infinitely better.

Real ethics and social responsibility would weigh these costs and benefits, foster robust debate about every aspect of climate change, ensure continued technological advancement, and give a seat at the decision table to the real stakeholders: not climate alarmists ? but those who have to live with the consequences of decisions that affect their access to energy, health, hope, opportunity and prosperity.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Atlas Economic Research Foundation, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death. CORE will host a November 29 program at the United Nations on how climate change programs and policies might affect industrialization, families and communities in developing nations.

with the following excerpt from the introduction to Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear.

"In late 2003, at the Sustainable Earth Summit Conference in Johannesburg, the Pacific island nation of Vanutu announced that it was preparing a lawsuit against the Envrionmental Protection Agency of the United States over global warming. Vanutu stood only a few feet above sea level, and the island's eight thousand inhabitantswere in danger of having to evacuate their country because of rising sea levels caused by global warming..."

Of course, Crichton's critics claimed that he exaggerated the methods and goals of the environmental movement. Did he?

The term global warming needs to be changed dropping the warming section, as it seems to many people are getting caught up and focused on one word.

I live in tropical australia and this year we had record cold tempatures during winter and we are entering summer, and so far the tempatures are the hottest it has been in years. We have had less rain during the wet season and more in the dry season than in the past. Last year the weather office predicted a quite year in terms of cyclones and yet we had more than predicted, they were also more destructive, with a couple of them coming at the very end of the cyclone season.

Australia as a whole is also expierencing the worst drought in recorded history, the daly river which is one of the strongest rivers in australia is barely a creek and in many areas you can walk across it without getting your feet wet.

I also think in the last few years the number and scale of natural disasters has been much larger.

Whether the globe is truly 'warming' or not, the weather has definatly been turned around.

The following links to a well annotated paper exploring the link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures. Though I'm not acquainted with the author or the self published journal, the data appears well considered and presented. I've included the first and last secions of the piece below:

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well?known but under?appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2?rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere.

Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation. Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere.

D. WHAT CLIMATOLOGISTS NEED TO DO

The GCMs need to be revamped. They need to have the primary thermodynamic loop restored. This is the chain of dynamic events from solar radiation, through the shading and reflection of clouds responding to temperature changes, absorption primarily in the ocean, and the transport and exchanges of heat and gases by which the oceans create and regulate the earth?s climate and atmosphere. The models need to reflect the mechanisms which make the earth?s climate not vulnerable, but stable.

The CO2 concentration is a response to the proxy temperature in the Vostok ice core data, not a cause. This does not contradict that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it does contradict the conjecture that the presence of a greenhouse gas has any destabilizing effect on global climate. Other forces overwhelm the conjecture of a runaway greenhouse effect. The concentration of CO2 is dynamic, controlled by the solubility pump. Global temperature is controlled first by the primary thermodynamic loop.

The Vostok data support an entirely new model. Atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. Fires, volcanoes, and now man deposit CO2 into the atmosphere, but those effects are transient. What exists in steady state is CO2 perpetually pumped into the atmosphere by the oceans. Atmospheric CO2 is a dynamic stream, from the warm ocean and back into the cool ocean.

Public policy represented by the Kyoto Accords and the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions should be scrapped as wasteful, unjustified, and futile.

Following are some remarks about my report ?Grape harvest dates are poor indicators of summer warmth?, as well as about scientific publication generally.

On 18 November 2004, Isabelle Chuine and co-workers published a research paper on global warming. The paper appeared in Nature, the world's most highly-regarded scientific journal. And it gathered some publicity. Chuine et al. claimed to have developed a method for estimating the summer temperature in Burgundy, France, in any given year back to 1370 (based on the harvest dates of grapes). Using their method, the authors asserted that the summer of 2003 was by far the warmest summer since 1370, in Burgundy.

I had been following global warming studies only as a disinterested outside spectator (and only occasionally). Someone sent me the paper of Chuine et al., though, and wondered what I thought of it from a mathematical perspective. So I had a look.

To study the paper properly, I needed to have the authors' data. So I e-mailed Dr. Chuine, asking for this. The authors, though, were very reluctant to let me have the data. It took me eight months, tens of e-mails exchanged with the authors, and two formal complaints to Nature, before I got the data. (Some data was purchased from M?t?o France.) It is obviously inappropriate that such a large effort was necessary.

Looking at the data made it manifest that there are serious problems with the work of Chuine et al. In particular, the authors' estimate for the summer temperature of 2003 was higher than the actual temperature by 2.4 ?C (about 4.3 ?F). This is the primary reason that 2003 seemed, according to the authors, to be so tremendously warm.

There is also another reason. The three warmest years on record, prior to 2003, were 1945, 1947, and 1952. (The instrumental record goes back to 1922, or even 1883 if we accept some inaccuracies.) The estimate of Chuine et al. for the summer temperature in each of those years was much lower than the actual temperature.

That is, the authors had developed a method that gave a falsely-high estimate of temperature in 2003 and falsely-low estimates of temperatures in other very warm years. They then used those false estimates to proclaim that 2003 was much hotter than other years.

The above is easy enough to understand. It does not even require any specialist scientific training. So how could the peer reviewers of the paper not have seen it? (Peer reviewers are the scientists who check a paper prior to its publication.) I asked Dr. Chuine what data was sent to Nature, when the paper was submitted to the journal. Dr. Chuine replied, ?We never sent data to Nature?.

I have since published a short note that details the above problem (reference below). There are several other problems with the paper of Chuine et al. as well. I have written a brief survey of those (for people with an undergraduate-level background in science). As described in that survey, problems would be obvious to anyone with an appropriate scientific background, even without the data. In other words, the peer reviewers could not have had appropriate background.

What is important here is not the truth or falsity of the assertion of Chuine et al. about Burgundy temperatures. Rather, what is important is that a paper on what is arguably the world's most important scientific topic (global warming) was published in the world's most prestigious scientific journal with essentially no checking of the work prior to publication.

Moreover?and crucially?this lack of checking is not the result of some fluke failures in the publication process. Rather, it is common for researchers to submit papers without supporting data, and it is frequent that peer reviewers do not have the requisite mathematical or statistical skills needed to check the work (medical sciences largely excepted). In other words, the publication of the work of Chuine et al. was due to systemic problems in the scientific publication process.

The systemic nature of the problems indicates that there might be many other scientific papers that, like the paper of Chuine et al., were inappropriately published. Indeed, that is true and I could list numerous examples. The only thing really unusual about the paper of Chuine et al. is that the main problem with it is understandable for people without specialist scientific training. Actually, that is why I decided to publish about it. In many cases of incorrect research the authors will try to hide behind an obfuscating smokescreen of complexity and sophistry. That is not very feasible for Chuine et al. (though the authors did try).

Finally, it is worth noting that Chuine et al. had the data; so they must have known that their conclusions were unfounded. In other words, there is prima facie evidence of scientific fraud. What will happen to the researchers as a result of this? Probably nothing. That is another systemic problem with the scientific publication process.

The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.

It has long been accepted that the Earth has experienced climate cycles, most notably the 90,000-year Ice Age cycles. But in the past 20 years or so, modern science has discovered evidence that within those broad Ice Age cycles, the Earth also experiences 1,500-year warming-cooling cycles. The Earth has been in the Modern Warming portion of the current cycle since about 1850, following a Little Ice Age from about 1300 to 1850. It appears likely that warming will continue for some time into the future, perhaps 200 years or more, regardless of human activity.

Evidence of the global nature of the 1,500-year climate cycles includes very long-term proxies for temperature change ? ice cores, seabed and lake sediments, and fossils of pollen grains and tiny sea creatures. There are also shorter-term proxies ? cave stalagmites, tree rings from trees both living and buried, boreholes and a wide variety of other temperature proxies.

Scientists got the first unequivocal evidence of a continuing moderate natural climate cycle in the 1980s, when Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland first saw two mile-long ice cores from Greenland representing 250,000 years of Earth?s frozen, layered climate history. From their initial examination, Dansgaard and Oeschger estimated the smaller temperature cycles at 2,550 years. Subsequent research shortened the estimated length of the cycles to 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years). Other substantiating findings followed:

An ice core from the Antarctic?s Vostok Glacier ? at the other end of the world from Greenland ? showed the same 1,500-year cycle through its 400,000-year length.The ice-core findings correlated with known glacier advances and retreats in northern Europe.Independent data in a seabed sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, reported in 1997, showed nine of the 1,500-year cycles in the last 12,000 years.Other seabed sediment cores of varying ages near Iceland, in the Norwegian and Baltic seas, off Alaska, in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Arabian Sea, near the Philippines and off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula all also showed evidence of the 1,500-year cycles. So did lake sediment cores from Switzerland, Alaska, various parts of Africa and Argentina, as did cave stalagmites in Europe, Asia and Africa, and fossilized pollen, boreholes, tree rings and mountain tree lines.

None of these pieces of evidence would be convincing in and of themselves. However, to dismiss the evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle, it is necessary to dismiss not only the known human histories from the past 2,000 years but also an enormous range and variety of physical evidence found by a huge body of serious researchers.

Environmentalists arguing against Singer's ideas say that he has a conflict of interest, i.e., financial ties to oil and tobacco companies [7], [8]. In 1993 APCO, a P.R. firm, sent a memo to Ellen Merlo, vice-president of Philip Morris, stating: "As you know, we have been working with Dr Fred Singer and Dr Dwight Lee, who have authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality (IAQ) respectively ..."[5]

The 1994 AdTI report was part of an attack on EPA regulation of environmental tobacco smoke funded by the Tobacco Institute.[9] Singer was also involved with the International Center for a Scientific Ecology [10], a group that was considered important in Philip Morris' plans to create a group in Europe similar to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). Singer is also a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute,[6] another recipient of Philip Morris and ExxonMobil funds.[7]

A nonsmoker himself, Singer serves on the Science Advisory Board of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH)[8], which strongly opposes smoking but otherwise tends to support industry positions on health issues.

In a February 2001 letter to the Washington Post, Singer denied receiving funding from the oil industry, except for consulting work some 20 years prior. SEPP, however, received multiple grants from ExxonMobil, including in 1998 and 2000.[9]

It's pretty hard to buy these kinds of articles when the authors are known for almost always adopting positions favorable to various pollutive industries (from whom they're also receiving financial support in many cases). That's not to say none of the so-called "global warming skeptics" has any credibility, but it should be noted that only a small minority of climate scientists holds this view.

Perhaps I shouldn?t be scribbling as I?m having issues with a dental implant, which likely leaves me crankier than normal. Be that as it may, I wanted to respond to the argumentum ad hominem posted above. Though a welcome, measured tone is evident in the post, attacking the person presenting the data rather than discussing the data itself is an example of fallacious logic, more information for which can be found here:

In short, I think it is a lot more useful to discuss the data rather than who provided it, particularly as zealots with dubious associations certainly aren?t exclusive to one side of the debate, while many prefer to disparage the messenger in the hope of dismissing substantive discussion.

As for the claim that only a small minority of climate scientists hold a skeptical view, not only is the point debatable, but it?s also associated with another fallacy called ?appeal to authority,? more info for which can be found here:

An aside: I?ve been a hard core caver for many years and work with an organization chartered to explore caves on federal land. During the course of my caving career I?ve worked with dozens of scientists, many of whom have literally written the textbook on this or that aspect of speleology. Around the meal table or while trudging through some passage me and my caving cohorts have witnessed and participated in numerous conversations with these speleologists, during which I learned that listening to scientists rattle on about their discipline pretty much sucks.

There you are on the 15th hour of some arduous trip, or you?ve been playing camera Sherpa all day, or you?ve been censusing crayfish in 45 degree water, and some self-important SOB starts droning on about the effect of micro-lineaments on local hydrology or somesuch. Indeed, cavers have a joke about it:

Q: What?s worse than caving with a geologist?

A: Caving with two geologists.

Perhaps you have to be there, but the only thing more unpleasant than spending time with a droning know-it-all is hanging out with two of them who invariably can?t agree on squat. Not only does it get old waiting for the argument to end, but you?re usually cold, hungry, tired and would really just as soon be somewhere else with a beer in hand.

Be that as it may, the reason list members are enduring these meanderings is because I?ve spent time in many chunks of cave listening to scientists natter back and forth endlessly. Usually the object of their argument is right there in front of them, yet despite the fact they can reach out and touch all the relevant data, they can?t come to agreement. Cut to the ?global warming? debate where the complexity of the claimed phenomena is many orders of magnitude vaster and the variables exponentially greater, yet a large majority of scientists are said to hold similar views. Trust it?s clear why this claim appears suspicious to me.

The geologic record clearly indicates that global climate change is the rule, not the exception. Perhaps human activity accelerates the rate of change, perhaps it impedes the rate of change, perhaps it does both. Tools that allow us to get a handle on some of the major variables are new on the scene?only now are we measuring the impact of cosmic radiation, the sun?s variability, the ocean?s carbon cycle, to name a few?and these tools certainly haven?t provided a data set covering a geologically significant time frame.

Should we continue to gather data and work to define the scope of human impact on the climate? Heck yes. Does the data gathered to date allow us to make even a rudimentary assessment of the scope of the problem and measure the benefits and costs of proposed responses? I don?t understand how anyone acquainted with the fundaments of scientific inquiry can claim to provide an authoritative answer.

Perhaps I shouldn?t be scribbling as I?m having issues with a dental implant, which likely leaves me crankier than normal. Be that as it may, I wanted to respond to the argumentum ad hominem posted above.

So is there simply no such thing as a conflict of interest? Are you claiming that the source of someone's research funding is completely unrelated to the conclusions they might draw? Their data and methods couldn't possibly be biased in favor of the people/corporations supplying the cash? I'm not saying they necessarily are, but to claim that viewing them with skepticism is some kind of ad hominem attack is ludicrous.

If the general consensus among environmental scientists was that there was no global warming except for a tiny minority of them who were all funded by the Sierra Club you wouldn't question their conclusions? You'd claim "ad hominem attack" if anyone suggested that maybe they were skewing the results in favor of their financial supporters?

No Milt, I'm saying what I've said to you and your brother in the past: look at the data, adhere to the scientific method, understand that viable data sets take a lot of time to create, resist the urge to run with the pack or side with the panic mongers and instead do the hard science.

As is all too usual in these instances, you then proceed to ignore about 90 percent of my argument and instead make shrill statements about some narrow slice. I'm once more throwing it back at you, so I 'spose it's now time for you to run to Crafty again and complain I'm a meanie, then your brother can pile on and call me a troll. Sheesh, what a silly dance.

I'll be out for a week busting butt in the middle of nowhere in support of environmental science and hence unable to respond to your next bon mot. How 'bout in the interim you find a peer reviewed set of data supporting your position and post it? We might then manage to expand horizons and further informed debate rather than partake of yet another circular dance as a thread heads down the inane drain.

Jeez, I have the sensation of dealing with my children when they are squabbling Oy vey!

I thought the adjective ludicrous a bit strong, but found the overall tone of voice quite plausible -- seems reasonable to me to note where someone gets their bread buttered. Yes it is tangential to the larger point and non-responsive to your main points and of course you are right that this proves nothing-- the science is the science and deal with it, but Buz, my man, this:

"As is all too usual in these instances, you then proceed to ignore about 90 percent of my argument and instead make shrill statements about some narrow slice. I'm once more throwing it back at you, so I 'spose it's now time for you to run to Crafty again and complain I'm a meanie, then your brother can pile on and call me a troll. Sheesh, what a silly dance."

is not necessary. Bad dog! The rest, being on the merits, would have been quite effective all by itself

So, Milt, I'd like to ask you to not continue around the mulberry bush with upir brother Buz's personal comments and simply respond to the part of his post which is on the merits: Do you have a "peer reviewed set of data supporting your position"? If so, have at it!

With cataclysmic predictions that hurricanes would swarm from the tropics like termites, no one thought 2006 would be the most tranquil season in a decade.

Barring a last-second surprise from the tropics, the season will end Thursday with nine named storms, and only five of those hurricanes. This year is the first season since 1997 that only one storm nudged its way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, Florida was hit by two tropical storms, Alberto and Ernesto. But after the pummeling of the previous two years, the storms barely registered on the public's radar.

So what happened? Lots.

Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say the storm-snuffing dust was more abundant than usual this year.

In the season's peak, storms were curving right like errant field goals. High pressure that normally hunkers near Bermuda shifted far eastward, and five storms rode the clockwise winds away from Florida.

Finally, a rapidly growing El Nino, a warming of water over the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifted winds high in the atmosphere southward. The winds left developing storms disheveled and unable to become organized.

As they say about the stock market: Past results are no indication of future performance.

This year's uneventful season provides no assurance that next year will be as calm:

?The Atlantic remains in a 20- to 30-year cycle of high hurricane activity that started in 1995. Water temperatures are above normal.

?El Nino probably won't be around to decapitate storms.

?There's no promise that the Saharan dust will be as abundant.

BY THE NUMBERS9: The number of named storms this year

17: The number of named storms predicted May 31 by a team at Colorado State University led by Professor William Gray

45 mph: The wind speed when Tropical Storm Alberto hit the Florida Panhandle near Adams Beach on June 13, the strongest winds over Florida all season

Sorry for my snippy tone. I certainly am an excitable boy and my chef?s temperament has stuck with me despite the fact I?m long out of that game. Combined with similar arguments I?ve had in other venues I tend to get ahead of the game start cleaving sooner rather than later. Be that as it may, it?s not my intent to leave muddy paw prints all over your forum.

I?d like to point out, however, that where science is concerned anyone involved in serious research is getting their bread buttered by someone with deep pockets, a fact that should be so obvious that I don?t understand the value of pointing it out. There has been plenty of research funded by private, profit-seeking entities that has had immense value, and plenty that misleads and hence is worth squat. Similarly there have been publicly funded efforts that have produced profound results as well as boondoggles capable of making every taxpayer cringe.

As everyone is getting their loaves slathered the relevant question is the one about the science: are reproducible results being obtained? If not, the science is bad, if so the science is good; science good or bad is not created by funding method, but by strict adherence, or lack thereof, to sound scientific method.

From mediaeval Popes attacking astronomers to Soviet autocrats dictating genetic findings to environmental extremists demanding ?Nuremburg style trials? there?s been a long history of zealots trying to force science to conform to one orthodoxy or another. These various attempts to quash scientific inquiry have met with short-term success, and they all favored attacking the researcher rather than the research, but ultimately the science has prevailed. I?d be willing to wager a substantial sum that 20 years hence human cause ?global warming? will no longer be the source of concern that it currently is. Alas, someone with an axe to grind will have doubtless embraced some other form of panic mongering in the hope of achieving a dubious end by then.

As that may be, here?s a recent piece that states the Antarctic ice sheet is increasing in mass. Seeing how I bought my mountaintop home near the eastern seaboard in anticipation of eventually having beachfront property, I guess I should sue Al Gore:

What was doneThe authors "analyzed 1.2 x 108 European remote sensing satellite altimeter echoes to determine the changes in volume of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2003." This survey, in their words, "covers 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet," which together comprise "72% of the grounded ice sheet.""

What was learnedWingham et al. report that "overall, the data, corrected for isostatic rebound, show the ice sheet growing at 5 ? 1 mm year-1." To calculate the ice sheet's change in mass, however, "requires knowledge of the density at which the volume changes have occurred," and when the researchers' best estimates of regional differences in this parameter are used, they find that "72% of the Antarctic ice sheet is gaining 27 ? 29 Gt year-1, a sink of ocean mass sufficient to lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm year-1." This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."

What it meansContrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more.Reviewed 8 November 2006

Climate Change: What happened to all the monster storms that global warming was going to stir up? The 2006 hurricane season, which officially ends Thursday, came in like a lamb and is going out the same way.

We should all thank Al Gore that we're still alive. After all, it was his widely acclaimed propaganda film "An Inconvenient Truth" that warned us of the coming hurricane plague. Storms like Katrina, which stars in his movie, were going to be arriving in larger numbers and with greater violence. We were doomed, thanks to the infernal internal combustion engine.

But a funny thing happened on the road to ruin: There were only nine named storms in the Atlantic season, with five of them becoming hurricanes. Last year, in an above-average season, there were 27 named storms, 15 of which were hurricanes. From 1995 to 2005, the average was 15 named storms and 8.5 hurricanes.This was the first season since the 1997 Atlantic hurricane period that the Gulf of Mexico suffered only one storm; it is also the first since that same year that no Category 4 or 5 storms formed.

We've said this before and we have to say it again: When experts can't even predict a six-month storm season with any accuracy, there's no way they can accurately predict the global climate many decades from now.

Yet those who have a deep faith in the global warming theory, like those who from the beginning of man have been predicting the world is about to end, will continue to forecast global warming-related afflictions.

This week many of them will be found in Washington, where the Supreme Court will hear arguments that carbon dioxide should be regulated as a pollutant under federal clean air laws.

This is crazy. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas. During the respiration process, humans and animals emit CO2 into the atmosphere; during photosynthesis, plants take in CO2 and convert it to oxygen. CO2 is used in soft drinks, baking, life jackets, medicines and fire extinguishers. Among other applications, it is used as a solvent by "green" dry cleaners.

Yes, we're aware of its greenhouse properties. Yet we're not convinced that the globe is warming because we burn fossil fuels ? a process that creates CO2 ? for power generation and transportation. The uneventful hurricane season only cements our doubt.That's not to say that a particularly brutal 2007 hurricane season would make us believers. We understand the storm cycle and know that we're in a turbulent period, so next year might be busy.

We wish Gore had the same grasp of reality, but that's probably asking too much. It's much more important that at least five members of the Supreme Court have an understanding of the issue that isn't tainted with green. The world sorely needs a cool front to blunt the overheated global warming rhetoric.

Poor little Kenya. That’s the message the media have been sending as the United Nations and European nations hold out this African country as the poster child of America’s environmental sins. In the weeks leading up today’s presentation of oral arguments in Massachusetts v. EPA — the Supreme Court case in which northeastern states are suing the Bush administration to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act — global-warming alarmists and the media have been pointing to malaria epidemics in the cooler regions of Kenya as proof of the harmful effects of human-induced “climate change.”

At the United Nations global-warming summit earlier this month in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi, the Associated Press breathlessly filed a dispatch citing Kenya as the prime example of how “a warmer world already seems to be producing a sicker world.” The article proclaimed that because global warming was “disrupting normal climate zones” in Kenya, “malaria epidemics have occurred in highland areas where cooler weather historically has kept down populations of the disease-bearing mosquitoes.”

The AP article followed the predictable pattern of blaming America for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, describing how the mostly Europeans signatories were discussing “how to draw the United States into a plan for mandatory emission caps.”

Many friend-of-the-court briefs point to recent cases of malaria appearing in the world’s cooler regions to try to persuade the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide is already affecting public health and thus should be regulated. With examples such as Kenya, they are likely trying to persuade swing justices, such as Anthony Kennedy, who increasingly weigh international considerations in their judgments about laws.

Al Gore’s book and DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, also showcases Kenya. Recent malaria outbreaks in the city of Nairobi, Gore proclaims, show that “now, with global warming, the mosquitoes are climbing to higher altitudes.” At the Nairobi summit, U.N. head Kofi Annan also turned up the heat by proclaiming that climate change “is a threat to health, since a warmer world is one in which infectious diseases such as malaria … will spread further and faster.” Annan then pointed his finger at what he called “the few diehard skeptics” that “try to sow doubt,” concluding that “they should be seen for what they are: out of step, out of arguments, and out of time.”

But when it comes to global warming and malaria, many of the “diehard skeptics” who are “out of step” with Annan and the media are prominent scientists who have produced studies published by the U.N.’s own World Health Organization. Research papers from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show not only that global warming is not to blame for malaria in Nairobi and the highlands, but that flawed environmental policies are the real culprit. We indeed should cry for Kenya, but our tears need to be directed at the right target. In Kenya and elsewhere, it is modern environmentalism that is “producing a sicker world.” And it is now primarily the U.N. and Europe that are blocking Kenya from using the best tool to fight her malarial epidemics. That tool is the “environmentally incorrect” insecticide DDT.

If the AP and other news services had bothered to talk to critics of global-warming alarmism or had even done a simple Google search with words such as “Kenya,” “malaria,” and “history,” they would have discovered a remarkable fact: Epidemics of malaria in Nairobi and in the highlands are nothing new under Kenya’s sun. They have occurred many times before in this century. In those regions of Kenya, as elsewhere, malaria was greatly reduced by the use of DDT to combat the mosquitoes spreading the disease. And there as elsewhere, malaria came back with a vengeance after DDT use was halted due in large part to the scare-mongering of Rachel Carson and other enviros.

If Annan, Gore or the AP had bothered to look at a comprehensive 1999 WHO report published in conjunction with the U.N. and World Bank’s Roll Back Malaria partnership, they would have come across this startling conclusion about malaria in the Kenyan highlands: “malaria among highland populations is better described as a re-emerging [underlining in original] problem rather than a new, unprecedented phenomena.” This paper, written by scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, documents that malaria “[e]pidemics in highland Kenya, varying in magnitude, location, and effect, were to recur throughout the 1940s.” As for Nairobi, that city experienced malaria outbreaks in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, according to the WHO report, which is entitled “The epidemiology, politics, and control of malaria epidemics in Kenya: 1900-1998.”

What brought an end to malaria in these regions for decades until it recently resurfaced? In substantial part, the spraying of DDT. “Following concerted attempts to interrupt transmission during the 1950s and 1960, … malaria risks declined significantly,” says the WHO study. And DDT was a large component of these “concerted attempts.”

According to the WHO paper, authorities in Kenya began spraying DDT in the 1940s, with an immediate 98 percent reduction in some regions. The report credited this spraying in substantial part for malaria not reoccurring in Nairobi after a flood in 1961.

The WHO report also casts a skeptical eye on climate playing any significant role in Kenya malaria resurgence. Measuring temperature and rainfall in Kenya’s Kericho district in the highlands, the study states that “there is no obvious effect of ‘warming’ in this area since 1967.” The U.S. CDC reported similar findings in 2005. The CDC study concluded: “Doubts exist as to the plausibility of climate change as proximate cause of epidemic malaria because global warming cannot explain the World War II epidemics. Dramatic increases in malaria in the 1990s are not mirrored by prospectively collected climate data.” And malaria researchers have also noted that the disease was endemic in many of other regions of the world, including the American South, until DDT eradicated malaria in those places after World War II.

But the malaria increases do seem to be mirrored in the reduction of DDT use. After the unfounded hysterics of Silent Spring author Rachel Carson and other eco-activists, DDT began to be used in Kenya less and less. Supply was restricted by U.S. and other nations’ bans, and in 1990 Kenya itself outlawed the insecticide’s use. Now there is extensive debate in Kenya, as elsewhere, about bringing back DDT. Two of the things that may be holding Kenya back from doing this, according to the online magazine Science in Africa, are the United Nations and the European Union. Although the WHO has commendably now called for DDT’s use in anti-malaria efforts, the U.N. Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants phases out DDT. It does have an exception for health reasons, but imposes expensive paperwork requirements on countries that use the substance. The European Union is also shedding crocodile tears for Kenya. “Europe is tightening its restrictions on insecticide residues on East African products,” according to the magazine, and this is discouraging DDT’s use, even though it would not be used in agriculture.

Imposing strict Kyoto-like reductions on carbon dioxide may worsen Kenya’s public-health systems, as well as those of other countries including our own, by making electricity use more expensive in setting such as hospitals. My colleague Marlo Lewis delves into more of these details in his report, “A Skeptic’s Guide to An Incovenient Truth.”

Critics of global-warming alarmism are often slammed as “deniers.” But to save Kenya and other poor nations from the ravages of malaria, we need to stand up to the activists and bureaucracies who should be called the DDT deniers.

— John Berlau, a policy director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is author of the just-published Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism Is Hazardous to Your Health.

Background:The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains a nationwide network of 27 libraries that provide critical scientific information on human health and environmental protection, not only to EPA scientists, but also to other researchers and the general public.

The libraries represent a unique and invaluable source of scientific knowledge on issues from hazardous waste to toxicology to pollution control. Additional benefit to scientific researchers is gained from the expertise of a dedicated library staff, who field more than 100,000 database and reference questions per year from EPA scientists and the public. http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=643

The above was sent to me by a dear friend, Arlene Blum who asked the following:

Please call EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson at (202) 564-4700 either today or Monday and tell him how much scientists rely on data and literature. Urge him to immediately halt the dismantling of the library system until Congress approves the EPA budget and all materials are readily available online.

Arlene is a mountain climber and bio-chemist who recently had an op-ed piece printed in the NY Times. I re-print it below:

November 19, 2006Op-Ed ContributorChemical Burns

By ARLENE BLUM

THIRTY years ago, as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, I published papers in Science magazine calling for the ban of brominated and chlorinated Tris, two flame retardants used in children's sleepwear. Both forms of Tris caused mutations in DNA, and leached from pajamas into children's bodies. In 1977, when brominated Tris was found to be a potent carcinogen, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned Tris from children's sleepwear.

So I was astonished to learn recently that the same chlorinated Tris that I helped eliminate from children's pajamas is being used today in the foam inside furniture sold in California to meet standards there for fire retardancy, and that the state is considering similar standards for pillows, comforters and mattress pads. The federal safety commission, following California's lead, is working to set a national standard for fire-retardant furniture.

Unfortunately, the most effective and inexpensive way for manufacturers to meet such standards is to treat bedding and furniture with brominated and chlorinated hydrocarbons like Tris. Though the chemical industry insists that they are safe, when tested in animals most chemicals in this family have been found to cause health problems like cancer, sterility, thyroid disorders, endocrine disruption, developmental impairment or birth defects, even at very low doses.

Many of these chemicals are long-lived and accumulate, especially in people and other animals high on the food chain. For example, PCBs, chlorinated chemicals that were also used as flame retardants, were banned in 1977, but very high concentrations can still be found in many creatures, including dead killer whales washed ashore in British Columbia.

According to the polyurethane-foam industry, if the new federal standard for furniture were similar to the California standard, using current technology, then an estimated 17 million pounds of fire-retardant chemicals, mostly brominated and chlorinated hydrocarbons, would be used annually. (A more rigorous standard also being considered by the safety commission would require up to 70 million pounds of chemicals a year, the industry says. Some of that could eventually end up in people and the environment.) To complicate matters, consumers wouldn't know whether the sofa they're curled up on had been treated with Tris or its cousins. The United States does not require labeling on furniture contents.

All this is not to say that furniture fires don't pose a danger. According to a recent report from the commission, 560 Americans died in house fires that started in upholstered furniture in 2003. But by contrast, cancer killed more than 500,000. What makes the potential increased use of chlorinated and brominated fire retardants all the more troubling is that it comes at a time when the risk of furniture fires is receding. Most fatal furniture fires are caused by cigarettes, which typically smolder for half an hour after being put down. The good news is that after decades of opposition from the cigarette industry, cigarettes that extinguish themselves within minutes are now mandatory in New York State and laws have been passed requiring them in five other states. They are likely to become universal in the United States in the near future, thereby greatly reducing the risk of furniture fires and the need for chemical treatments. So why are we still using these potentially dangerous chemicals? In the United States, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty: we wait until someone has been harmed by exposure to chemicals before regulating them. This is not an effective strategy, since most cancers occur 20 to 40 years after exposure, and are usually caused by multiple agents. Consequently, it's very difficult to link human cancer to specific chemicals or consumer products.

And there's another problem: In the United States, the manufacturers of consumer products are not required to disclose the results of toxicity tests to regulators or the public before selling their products.

In marked contrast, the European Union is adopting a "better safe than sorry" philosophy through regulations known as the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals. Manufacturers must demonstrate that their products are safe for people and the environment to introduce them and keep them on the market.

This standard provides a strong incentive for finding new alternatives to potentially dangerous brominated and chlorinated chemicals. An innovative Swedish company, for example, is developing a nontoxic fire retardant, Molecular Heat Eater, derived from oranges and lemons, that prevents fires in plastics and fabrics.

Home fires are a defined danger in the present. Chemical fire retardants pose a more ambiguous risk that can last for decades. We need to consider the larger picture before passing regulations that would put chemical fire retardants inside our pillows and those of our children, who are even more vulnerable to carcinogens. These regulations would lead to the widespread use of fire retardants that could be ultimately much more hazardous to us and our environment than the fires they're intended to prevent.

Arlene Blum, the author of "Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life," is a biophysical chemist.

You can view photos and text from Arlene's new book Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life at

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.

We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."

The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations.

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.

Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about "censorship." That's exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

The Senators' letter is far more serious because they have enormous power to punish Exxon if it doesn't kowtow to them. A windfall profits tax is in the air, and we've seen what happens to other companies that dare to resist Congressional intimidation. It's to Exxon's credit that, in its response to the Senators, the company said that it will continue to fund free market research groups because "there is value in the debate" that helps promote "optimal public policy decisions." Too bad that's not what the Senators care about.

What are the specific claims made by the IPCC that you take issue with? I suppose I could post a link to some website debunking the junkscience.com rebuttal, but that wouldn't make for a very interesting discussion.

By Peter C GloverIn November economist and former British Lord Chancellor Nigel Lawson in Maggie Thatcher's government rose to give an address at the Centre for Policy Studies in London. What his audience were privileged to experience was nothing less than a rare phenomenon: sheer force of reason in public debate. I adjure anyone concerned about the lack of emphasis on reason in current public debate to read the text of Lawson's address: The Economics and Politics of Climate Change: An Appeal to Reason in full here. However, for those who struggle to read even eighteen reason-injecting pages....

Lawson's paper addresses the key scientific, economic, political and social issues surrounding climate change - a tall order within the ambit of a single address. First he deals with the "consensus" that persists in claiming that the climate science is "settled". And, adding his voice to others debunking the recent "scaremongering" Stern Report, Lawson cites the ultimate "uncertainty" inherent in our understanding of the "relatively new" and "highly complex science of climatology". For all its great size, says Lawson, the report "adds disappointingly little"..."apart from a battery of essentially spurious statistics based on theoretic models and conjectural worst cases."

Lawson then goes back to basics. First, is global warming occurring? Second, if so, why? And third, what should be done about it? As to the first, he cites the Hadley Centre for Climate Change

Noting that carbon dioxide emissions are an important contributor to the build up of greenhouse gases (gases which keep the earth warmer than it would otherwise be) he points out that carbon emissions are "a long way back" behind the major contributor - water vapour, including in cloud form - and that "neither is a pollutant". He confirms the published view of the British Met Office that attributes around 0.3 degrees C out of the 0.5 degrees increase between 1975 and 2000 to man-made sources of greenhouse gases. "But this is highly uncertain, and reputable climate scientists differ sharply over the subject. It is simply not true to say that the science is settled." And he cites the intervention of the Royal Society "to prevent the funding of climate scientists who do not share its alarmist view" as "truly shocking". He goes on to identify from where our uncertainty ought to derive: prediction figures as recording "no further global warming since 1998". Pointing out that the earth saw a total 0.7 degree C rise over the whole of the last century he asks why this has happened. Giving an answer alien to some climatologists: "The only honest answer is that we don't know." Lawson explains, "Conventional wisdom is that the principal reason is the greatly increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere."the science of clouds is " clearly critical" yet it is "one of the least well understood aspects of climate science."the failure to understand "the extent to which urbanization has contributed to the observed warming".The lack of correlation between the steady rise in carbon emissions in the twentieth century and the up and down variations in global mean surface temperatures, for which there is "no adequate explanation", and not least,"the earth's climate has always been subject to natural variation, wholly unrelated to man's activities."Lawson points out that the work of the UN set-up International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about more about prediction and "not a matter of science at all, but consists of economic forecasting" that "depends on the rate of world economic growth over the next hundred years." In this vein he points out: "The upper part of the IPCC's range of scenarios - a rise of between one and six degrees in global mean temperatures by the end of this century - is "distinctly unconvincing" depending, as it does, on "an implausibly high rate of population growth or an unprecedented growth in energy intensiveness, which in fact been in steady decline for over 50 years".

"Equally implausible" are the IPCC's estimates of costs, not least on agriculture and food production. "Whatever climate alarmists like to make out, we are confronted with...the probability of very gradual change over a large number of years. And this is something to which it is eminently practicable to adapt." He goes on to give three reasons why "adaptation" is "far and away the most cost-effective approach".

The benefits of adaptation are that it: deals with existing issues, eg. coastal erosion.brings benefits regardless of whether the cause is man-made or natural.addresses the benefits of global warming as well as the costs.He then derides a principal tenet of conventional alarmist thinking which argues we "need to cut back substantially on carbon dioxide emissions in order to help the world's poor" as "bizarre in the extreme". He asserts that the enormous cost involved can only "diminish significantly the export markets on which the future prosperity of the developing countries at least in part depends...far from helping the poor, it is more likely to harm them." He notes how even the UN admits Kyoto has failed, yet it still "remains the conventional answer to the challenge of global warming. It is hard to imagine a more absurd response."

Turning to the "immense" folly of any attempt to exclude the major developing countries from the Kyoto process, he highlights the case of China. "China alone last year embarked on a programme of building 562 large coal-fired power stations by 2012 - that is, a new coal-fired power station every five days for seven years." He identifies the shocking reality that: "China is adding the equivalent of Britain's entire power-generating capacity each year." And this is without considering the effect of similar development in India and Brazil.

The logic should be plain to all, he asserts: "If carbon dioxide emissions in Europe are reduced only to see them further increased in China, there is no net reduction in global emission at all." In his understated ‘Lordly' tone we can still glean his concern at the current media-induced hysteria: "The extent of ill-informed wishful thinking on this issue is hard to exaggerate."

Lamenting the "regrettable arrogance and intolerance of the Royal Society" he sees that "the uncertainty surrounding the complex issue of climate change is immense and the scope for honest differences of view considerable." And how "in a world of inevitably finite resources" spending large sums to guard against "theoretical danger" would be unjustified, especially as the "evidence that (warming) will accelerate to disastrous levels is, to say the least, unconvincing."

Having pursued the science, economics and politics of climate change, he turns to a fourth social issue. One, he believes, is driving the less-than-scientific and aggressively un-reasoning approach that marks current alarmist intolerance. "It is not difficult to understand...the appeal of the conventional climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep in man's psyche has made him receptive to ‘the end is nigh' apocalyptic warnings." Lawson believes we, as individuals, "imbued with a sense of guilt and a sense of sin" and he notes how easily we convert this into a sense of "collective guilt and collective sin"

This in turn spawns a "new religion of Eco-fundamentalism" whose "new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants) rather than the clerics of established religions". But this new religion "presents dangers on at least three levels": Governments of Europe pursuing policies fired by anti-Americanisma profound hostility to capitalism and the market economy, and, most dangerous of all,the abandonment of our traditions of reason and tolerance.The irrationality and intolerance of Eco-fundamentalism, says Lawson, regards the "questioning of its mantras" as "a form of blasphemy." And he concludes with an apocalyptic vision of his own - and one far more devastating in its consequences than Climate Change: "There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today."

Climate alarmists are increasingly at the vanguard of Lawson's "retreat from reason". The debate on climate change is, sadly, fast becoming as much about the right to free speech as much a discussion on the issues. As Francisco de Goya once warned: "The sleep of reason brings forth monsters" - a pestilence of national economy-eating Eco-taxes, for instance.

Peter C Glover has highlighted the failure of the British media to question the climate science "consensus" in this article in British Journalism Review magazine. A free copy of Lord Lawson's lecture (or a copy of the text) The Economics and Politics of Climate Change: An Appeal to Reason can be obtained via can be heard, or a text of the address obtained online here.

First, the relatively new and highly complex science of climatology is an uncertain one, and neither scientists nor politicians serve either the truth or the people by pretending to know more than they do.

Second, far and away the most rational response to such climate change as, for any reason, may occur, is to adapt to it.

And third, the rich countries of the temperate world have an obligation to assist the poor countries of the tropical world to undertake whatever adaptation may be needed.

It is not difficult to understand, however, the appeal of the conventional climate change wisdom. Throughout the ages something deep in man’s psyche has made him receptive to apocalyptic warnings: “the end of the world is nigh”.

Almost of all us are imbued with a sense of guilt and a sense of sin, and it is so much less uncomfortable to divert our attention away from our individual sins and causes of guilt, arising from how we have treated our neighbours, and to sublimate it in collective guilt and collective sin.

Throughout the ages, too, the weather has been an important part of the narrative. In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the people; and there is no shortage of examples of this theme in the Bible, either – particularly but not exclusively in the Old Testament.

The main change is that the new priests are scientists (well rewarded with research grants for their pains) rather than clerics of the established religions, and the new religion is eco-fundamentalism. But it is a distinction without much of a difference. And the old religions have not been slow to make common cause.

Does all this matter? Up to a point, no. Unbelievers should not be dismissive of the comfort that religion can bring. If people feel better when they buy a hybrid car and see a few windmills dotted about (although perhaps not in their own back yard), then so be it.

And in a democracy, if greenery is what the people want, politicians will understandably provide it, dressed in the most high-flown rhetoric they can muster. Indeed, if people are happy to pay a carbon tax, provided it is not at too high a level, and the proceeds are used to cut income tax, that would not be a disaster, either. It would have to be a consumer-based tax, however, since in the globalised world economy industry is highly mobile, whereas individuals are much less so.

But the new religion of eco-fundamentalism does present dangers on at least three levels.

The first is that the governments of Europe, fired in many cases by anti- Americanism (never underestimate the extent to which distaste for President Bush has fuelled the anti-global warming movement), may get so carried away by their rhetoric as to impose measures which do serious harm to their economies. That is a particular danger at the present time in this country. No doubt, when the people come to suffer the results they will insist on a change of policy, or else vote the offending government out of office. But it would be better to avoid the damage in the first place.

The second, and more fundamental, danger is that the global salvationist movement is profoundly hostile to capitalism and the market economy. There are already increasing calls for green protectionism – for the imposition of trade restrictions against those countries which fail to agree to curb their carbon dioxide emissions. Given the fact that the only way in which the world’s poor will ever be able to escape from their poverty is by embracing capitalism and the global market economy, this is not good news.

But the third danger is even more profound. Today we are very conscious of the threat we face from the supreme intolerance of Islamic fundamentalism. It could not be a worse time to abandon our own traditions of reason and tolerance, and to embrace instead the irrationality and intolerance of eco- fundamentalism, where reasoned questioning of its mantras is regarded as a form of blasphemy. There is no greater threat to the people of this planet than the retreat from reason we see all around us today.

I?d like to point out, however, that where science is concerned anyone involved in serious research is getting their bread buttered by someone with deep pockets, a fact that should be so obvious that I don?t understand the value of pointing it out.

I never said anything about deep pockets. I pointed out that the funders of the global warming deniers that you cite have a financial interest in the results going a particular way. It''s got nothing to do with research being expensive.

Not infrequently, the question is asked as to why JunkScience.com does not weigh into the so-called debate concerning evolution/creation (there'll probably be trouble because I didn't capitalise that). The answer is simple: alleged ID and Creation (there, better?) are matters of faith with zero requirement for science nor proof. In fact, "He said it. I believe it. That's an end to it." leaves no room for debate, informed, reasoned or otherwise - it's faith and perfectly sufficient for believers. The bottom line here is that, if you believe, that's fine, as it is if you don't believe - just don't confuse belief with science. And no, we won't be answering e-mail on this.

Pretty weak, coming from a so-called skeptic.

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As everyone is getting their loaves slathered the relevant question is the one about the science: are reproducible results being obtained? If not, the science is bad, if so the science is good; science good or bad is not created by funding method, but by strict adherence, or lack thereof, to sound scientific method.

Unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere over the last couple of hundred years due to human industrial activity. The warming / cooling in different parts of the atmosphere is consistent with what we would expect from an accumulation of greenhouse gases and these temperature changes are occurring at a much greater rate than any prior variations due to the planet's natural climate cycle. This seems like pretty good evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary that doesn't come from Exxon researchers? Which of these claims do you dispute? I'm happy to discuss any scientific objections you have on any particular point.

Come on, let's talk about the science. I'll look at some links to actual research papers, but please, no more links to various websites that claim to debunk the other side's arguments. Let's just put them in our own words.

I never said anything about deep pockets. I pointed out that the funders of the global warming deniers that you cite have a financial interest in the results going a particular way. It''s got nothing to do with research being expensive.

Semantic nitpicking. What a surprise. Crafty, in fact, brought up the “bread buttered” metaphor, the point was about financial interests, so I used “deep pockets” and “slathering,” but the issue remains the same. All sides of the debate have financial, and for that matter political, stakes in the research, and if you don’t understand that you don’t understand research. You seek to dismiss one side of the argument by claiming conflict of financial interest. I reply that the same could be said of the other side so let’s look at the science instead. You retort by restating your thesis ever louder and ignoring mine. Circular silliness say I.

Not infrequently, the question is asked as to why JunkScience.com does not weigh into the so-called debate concerning evolution/creation (there'll probably be trouble because I didn't capitalise that). The answer is simple: alleged ID and Creation (there, better?) are matters of faith with zero requirement for science nor proof. In fact, "He said it. I believe it. That's an end to it." leaves no room for debate, informed, reasoned or otherwise - it's faith and perfectly sufficient for believers. The bottom line here is that, if you believe, that's fine, as it is if you don't believe - just don't confuse belief with science. And no, we won't be answering e-mail on this.

Pretty weak, coming from a so-called skeptic.

Uhm, and your point is? As our exchanges attest, matters of faith resist scientific scrutiny, hence using the tools of scientific inquiry in that context is, as Junk Science states, futile. Be it “God put the fossils there to test our faith” yoyos or “anthropogenic warming dooms us all and if you don’t agree you’re a tool of big oil” panic mongers, there’s little room for science in the face of fervent belief. Think the Church of Anthropogenic Climate Apocalypse (CACA) is horrified by heretics like me, hence the attempts to find a rhetorical stake to tie me to. Gotta match, Milt?

I should certainly know better than to argue with True Believers, but my end is not to sway you as I know that won’t occur. Rather, the doomsayers have almost exclusive access to the mainstream megaphone so in the venues I frequent I post the contrarian view. Hopefully the folks I respect in a given venue will derive some utility from the information I post. I care not at all what others do with it or feel about it. If Crafty finds this attitude abhorrent he can send me packing.

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Unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere over the last couple of hundred years due to human industrial activity.

As repeatedly mentioned in this thread, the tools for making measurements capable of supporting this sweeping statement are new on the scene, carbon dioxide measurements made over a geologically relevant period are hard to come by, while the geologic record clearly indicates climate change is the norm, rather than the exception. What were the CO2 levels in the late Cretaceous? Don’t know? Then you can’t make sweeping statements about precedents, eh?

An aside: One of the groups I cave with has been gathering data in the same cave system since the late 1950’s. Back in the day a line plot of the cave with a rough sketch of the walls was deemed sufficient. Roughly every decade since then the level of detail considered the norm has risen sharply, requiring resurvey of well-known cave. Each resurvey effort produces new information that alters the way we view the cave system. Though the tools we use to survey the cave have basically remained the same—compass, clinometer, tape, and survey sketchbook—our understanding of the relevant level of detail required has changed dramatically, hence more detailed measurements, hence more detailed understanding, and ever more finite questions.

Jump to climate science where the tools are complex and often hot out of the box, baseline surveys non-existent, major gaps in the database evident every direction you point, doomsayers yodel in the hope of cooking the books, while politicians attempt to warp science to their ends, and you want to chastise me for failing to leap to your conclusions? Sell it to someone who is buying, young acolyte. I’m not.

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Do you have any evidence to the contrary that doesn't come from Exxon researchers?

And we are back to the ad hominem. Researchers who you are slapping with that tag could just as easily be labeled “NOAA scientists” or “MIT professors.” You don’t get awarded either title without demonstrating more than a modicum of rigor in your field; alas zealots of all stripes find it easier to attack the messenger than the message. Demanding evidence while embracing fallacious logical technique is disingenuous at best. There is no percentage in partaking of that dissimulative dance.

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Which of these claims do you dispute? I'm happy to discuss any scientific objections you have on any particular point

Come on, let's talk about the science. I'll look at some links to actual research papers, but please, no more links to various websites that claim to debunk the other side's arguments. Let's just put them in our own words. .

A casual scan of our various posts demonstrates full well that I’ve far more original writing on display here than you; as for posting links and little else, that’s a habit you’ve honed far more finely than I. As such it’s difficult for me to conclude your cajoling is anything more than gamesmanship, and I’m not here to play games.

My goal is stated above: to provide folks I respect a source for alternative information, among other things. As best I can tell, your goal is to shout me down or, failing that, tie me up in circular arguments, or failing that, convince Crafty I’m such a rotten fellow I should be shown the door. Nothing in my ends, however, bind me to helping you achieve yours, so I will continue partake of discussions that further my goals, and avoid ones that clearly will not bear any fruit.

But hey, if you are indeed interested in discussing science I’ve posted plenty of material to which you haven’t responded so have at it. Perhaps someone else has the time on his hands to pick through the CACA orthodoxies I expect will result.

Dad here. You are so close to actually having a great conversation that it would be a shame to allow the very human temptation to slip in witty zingers ruin things.

I would like to suggest simply taking a clean slate from here forward.

Daddy Dog

Buz:

I appreciate your point about science is science, no matter who pays for it-- but for us less than fully educated civilians who lack the education to confidently break down stuff that frankly often goes right over our head with nary a look back, it can leave us with an uneasy feeling to see interested money behind the science. I appreciate, and perhaps Milt underappreciates, that there is money behind the ethos of the Ecos too, but perhaps a moment of reflection will remind you that there are four functions: thinking; feeling; sensation; and intuition and each person has one as a dominant modality. You are a thinker, which is only 10% of the population. If I may, the trick for you is to identify the principle modality of non-thinkers and have techniques to effectively communicate with them. Quick, which type is Milt?

Anyway, lets everyone start with a clean slate-- there is a good conversation to be had here.

As repeatedly mentioned in this thread, the tools for making measurements capable of supporting this sweeping statement are new on the scene, carbon dioxide measurements made over a geologically relevant period are hard to come by, while the geologic record clearly indicates climate change is the norm, rather than the exception.

Climate change at the current rate is not the norm. Are you claiming that the borehole data, surface and satellite temperature measurements, ice core records, etc. are all BS? I can post the data and graphs if you want.

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Do you have any evidence to the contrary that doesn't come from Exxon researchers?

Quote from: buzwardo

And we are back to the ad hominem.

Well, all my data comes from peer-reviewed papers published in respected journals such as Nature, Science, etc. All yours seems to come from industry backed front groups and a handful of scientists funded by them. If someone's trying to convince me that tobacco doesn't cause cancer, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them for evidence that doesn't come from Philip Morris.

BEGINBUZ: My goal is stated above: to provide folks I respect a source for alternative information, among other things. As best I can tell, your goal is to shout me down or, failing that, tie me up in circular arguments, or failing that, convince Crafty I’m such a rotten fellow I should be shown the door. MILT: I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't shouted you down, presented circular arguments, or ever complained to Crafty about you or anyone else.END

does not qualify as "start(ing) with a clean slate." PLEASE, EVERYONE (Milt, Buz and everyone) let it go and PROCEED FORWARD FROM HERE.

Into finals around here, which precludes me from giving any response I pen the scrutiny I know it will be subject too. Perhaps at some point in the future I’ll be inspired to partake of a major deconstructive spasm. In the interim I’ll continue to post things that catch my eye in the hope they provide utility to the folks who do the same for me.

"Global annual surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 mean based on surface air measurements at meteorological stations and ship and satellite measurements for sea surface temperature."

"The highest global surface temperature in more than a century of instrumental data was recorded in the 2005 calendar year in the GISS annual analysis. However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year."

"Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Nio this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2C above the trend line by the strongest El Nio of the past century. Recent warming coincides with rapid growth of human-made greenhouse gases. Climate models show that the rate of warming is consistent with expectations"

From http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/borehole/borehole.html:"Borehole data are direct measurements of temperature from boreholes drilled into the Earth crust. Departures from the expected increase in temperature with depth (the geothermal gradient) can be interpreted in terms of changes in temperature at the surface in the past, which have slowly diffused downward, warming or cooling layers meters below the surface."

"Underground temperature measurements were examined from a database of over 350 bore holes in eastern North America, Central Europe, Southern Africa and Australia. Using this unique approach, Pollack et al. found that the 20th century to be the warmest of the past five centuries, thus confirming the results of earlier multi-proxy studies."

"The geophysical methods used to generate bore hole temperature reconstructions do not permit annual or decade resolution, but only the century-scale trend in temperatures over the last several centuries. Nonetheless, this record, totally independent of data and methods used in other studies, shows the same thing: the Earth is warming dramatically."

"Beginning in the 1970's, paleoclimatologists began constructing a blueprint of how the Earth's temperature changed over the centuries before 1850 and the widespread use of thermometers. Out of this emerged a view of the past climate based on limited data from tree rings, historical documents, sediments and other proxy data sources. Today, many more paleoclimate records are available from around the world, providing a much improved view of past changes in the Earth's temperature."

"Over the last decade, there has been a major breakthrough in our understanding of global temperature change over the last 1000 years. Several different but important studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, revolutionized what we know about the 20th century in the context of past centuries. The research of the late 1990s formed the foundation for a progression of studies that followed, incorporating advances in statistical techniques and information from a broad range of proxy data types."

"Although each of the proxy temperature records shown below is different, due in part to the diverse statistical methods utilized and sources of the proxy data, they all indicate similar patterns of temperature variability over the last 500 to 2000 years. Most striking is the fact that each record reveals a steep increase in the rate or spatial extent of warming since the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. When compared to the most recent decades of the instrumental record, they indicate the temperatures of the most recent decades are the warmest in the entire record. In addition, warmer than average temperatures are more widespread over the Northern Hemisphere in the 20th century than in any previous time."

"The similarity of characteristics among the different paleoclimatic reconstructions provides confidence in the following important conclusions: * Dramatic warming has occurred since the 19th century. * The recent record warm temperatures in the last 15 years are indeed the warmest temperatures the Earth has seen in at least the last 1000 years, and possibly in the last 2000 years."

"Variations of temperature, methane, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations derived from air trapped within ice cores from Antarctica."

This graph shows the 100,000 year natural climate cycle and the correlation of carbon dioxide concentration with temperature.

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Into finals around here, which precludes me from giving any response I pen the scrutiny I know it will be subject too. Perhaps at some point in the future I\u2019ll be inspired to partake of a major deconstructive spasm.

Risking their reputations, these three academics buck the general consensus on three contentious current issues

by Léo Charbonneau

To be “contrary” can connote a certain willful or perverse stubbornness. And indeed, contrariness for its own sake can be tiresome, even futile. However, if driven by reason and fact, contrarians can sometimes break from the pack of conventional thinking to uncover difficult or inconvenient truths.

Universities, with their culture of academic freedom, civil debate and the open exchange of ideas, should celebrate the mavericks, the dissenters, the iconoclasts and the naysayers. But some in academe argue that universities today tend more towards group think, political correctness and intolerance of unconventional views.

To explore this issue, we introduce you to three academic contrarians: the global-warming denier, the gun booster and the feminist critic. All three hold views that arguably place them outside the mainstream of academe. The reactions they’ve received from their peers have ranged from polite acceptance to near ostracism. Despite this, all three feel grateful for the opportunities academia has provided them to pursue their ideas – whether others wish to follow or not. Here are their stories.

The global-warming denierThis past spring the little magnolia tree in Tim Patterson’s front yard produced an abundance of flowers. Ottawa is well north of the typical range for magnolias, but if the winter is relatively mild, as it was this past year, the tree does well. A harsh winter and the little tree struggles.

With the advent of global warming, you’d think Dr. Patterson’s magnolia has a secure future. But Dr. Patterson, a geology professor at Carleton University, doesn’t believe the Earth’s climate is warming. The theory of manmade climate change due to greenhouse gases is incorrect and outdated, he says. “I don’t get excited about what climate modelers are saying.”

Dr. Patterson, whose specialty is paleoclimatology, is well aware that his views on climate change place him in a minority within the scientific community. But if he’s feeling the heat, he doesn’t show it. “As a scientist I can only go where the science takes me, and not where someone like David Suzuki wants me to go.” When he does get criticized, it’s rarely about the science, he says, but rather is an “ad hominem attack of some sort, like ‘Patterson’s in the pocket of Big Oil.’ Well I wish!”

In any event, science is not a popularity contest, he points out, and the general consensus is not always right. He cites the example of continental drift, a concept laughed at by most scientists until distinguished Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson championed the cause in the 1960s. A more recent example from the 1980s was the theory, considered preposterous by the medical establishment at the time, that bacteria might be the cause of peptic ulcers. Australian physician Barry Marshall, who proposed the idea, was eventually proven right, and he and colleague Robin Warren last year won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their efforts.

Of course, there are many other examples of scientists who bucked the trend and turned out to be wrong. Asked if he has any doubts, Dr. Patterson replies, “Sure I could be wrong … but I don’t think so.”

Dr. Patterson may take comfort in the fact he’s not entirely alone in his views. A number of colleagues share his position, including Fred Michel at Carleton, and Jan Veizer and Ian Clark at the University of Ottawa, among others. “At these [two] institutions, climate researchers who agree with my perspective on climate change actually outnumber the alarmists,” he says.

What these scientists essentially agree on is that the Kyoto Protocol is pointless because carbon dioxide emissions are not driving climate change. The computer models are simply wrong and do not match actual observations. Instead, Dr. Patterson points to solar variability – changes in the sun’s solar cycle – as the likely culprit. The sun experiences an 11-year sunspot cycle as well as much longer cycles of solar activity, and these trends in the sun’s output correlate well with temperature records dating back hundreds of years, he says.

Asked how the scientific community, the media and Al Gore could get the story so wrong, Dr. Patterson says it’s mainly because the debate has become so politicized. Environmental activists have taken what should be rational scientific debates and turned them into occasions for “evangelizing and antagonizing,” even though “they don’t really know what they’re talking about.”

Some climate skeptics, fearing the public backlash or damage to their scientific reputations, decide to keep their views to themselves, says Dr. Patterson. Others, notably scientists working for federal agencies, were effectively muzzled under “previous regimes,” he says. “I’m glad I don’t work for government. Where I am in the university environment, I can pretty much say what I want. … I don’t worry about political correctness too much.”

Dr. Patterson does do the occasional media interview, but somewhat reluctantly. After each one, “the phone starts ringing off the hook” with additional interview requests that he doesn’t have time for. Environmental advocacy groups, on the other hand, “have all the time. It’s their jobs.”

Nevertheless, Dr. Patterson thinks the message is starting to change. The theory of manmade global warming is “a house of cards. It’s going to collapse.” He also thinks the fear mongers will look a bit foolish once we enter the next cooling phase. This will happen likely around 2020 when the next solar cycle begins, he predicts. The fear of global warming will then “go out the window … and I’ll lose my magnolia.”

The gun boosterTwo or three times a year, Gary Mauser invites a handful of people to the gun range to do some shooting. That wouldn’t seem too exceptional, except for the fact that Dr. Mauser is a professor at an urban university and his guests are curious students and colleagues – not your typical gun fanciers. That is precisely the point.

Dr. Mauser, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University, says the aim of these gatherings is partly to teach firearms safety but mainly to demystify guns for individuals who likely have never held one. His larger purpose is to sensitize folks about the wider issues of gun control. He believes guns and gun owners have been unfairly demonized in society, mainly by urban elites.

He also thinks Canadians need to be disabused of a few cherished myths: namely, that access to guns increases crime and that strict gun laws reduce it. And don’t even get him started about the “failed experiment” of the federal gun registry.

Most of those who accompany him to the gun range learn a lot and enjoy the experience, says Dr. Mauser. But he’s not had as easy a time convincing fellow academics about his conclusions on gun control. “There are some people who have supported me, but by and large I meet with this kind of liberal intolerance,” he says. “Many academics will go to great lengths not to let really strong disproof change their basic beliefs.”

Dr. Mauser grew up in California. But, unlike the stereotype of Americans, he had almost no experience with guns while growing up. His first real exposure to gun culture was when one of his students took him to a gun club. “It was such a bizarre world. I figured, hey, I’m going to study these guys.”

A survey researcher with a PhD in social psychology, Dr. Mauser was interested in how policy is developed from a political and marketing perspective. He discovered that the National Rifle Association offered research grants, applied almost as a lark, and got one.

What he found through this and subsequent studies over the years is that there is virtually no empirical evidence to support the notion that restrictive firearms legislation reduces criminal violence. In fact, guns could even be considered a “social good,” he says, citing data which suggest that laws encouraging the use of concealed weapons may actually reduce crime. (Much of Dr. Mauser’s research can be found at www.sfu.ca/~mauser/.)

Studies that reached the opposite conclusion, showing the danger of guns, either had faulty methodology or were not reproducible, he says. “These are folk tales, and the empirical support for them tends to disappear when you get close.”

As for the example, held up by gun opponents, of our southern neighbour awash in guns and crime, Dr. Mauser responds that this is more a socioeconomic issue than an issue of “access to one or another kind of weapon.”

His conclusions have not endeared him to many legal reformers, politicians and special interest groups, nor to other researchers. “It’s not easy telling the emperor he has no clothes,” he says. Conversely, he’s wary when some groups attempt to use his research as justification for their own political agendas.

One acclaim he’s received for his work, awarded in 2001, was the Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy. The prize promotes “creative, unconventional” work at SFU which “provokes, and/or contributes to the understanding of controversy.”

Overall, “the university has been tolerant,” says Dr. Mauser. However, within his faculty of business administration, the situation is somewhat more complicated. There are those who applaud him for being a bit of an iconoclast, but others have questioned whether the articles he’s published in criminology and political science journals should count for review when he’s a marketing professor.

The feminist criticIt’s a man’s world, goes the old adage. But is it? Katherine Young, a professor of religion at McGill University, doesn’t think so. In fact, she thinks men are pretty hard done by, and the culprit is ideological feminism.

Her unconventional views have been heralded by the fledgling men’s movement, but the response from academia has been less than enthusiastic. Reactions to her work have ranged from cries of “shame” to doubts about her sanity “for even bringing this up.”

But bring it up she has, first in Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, published in 2001, and most recently in Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men, released this past spring. (Misandry is the hatred of men, the counterpart of misogyny).

A third book, Transcending Misandry, is planned to complete the trilogy. All three are co-authored by Paul Nathanson, a researcher at McGill and one of Dr. Young’s former graduate students.

Publishing the books wasn’t easy, says Dr. Young. She credits Philip Cercone, executive director of McGill-Queen’s University Press, “who thinks that an academic press should go after unconventional views.” The opportunity to publish, she adds, “is key to whether academics will risk doing research that is different and not politically correct.”

In the first book, Spreading Misandry, the authors describe how contempt and hatred of men have become deeply embedded in recent popular culture, from movies to TV shows to greeting cards, and so on. The authors say this phenomenon was initiated and is still promoted by “a segment of the academic elite” affiliated with what they call ideological feminism.

In the 1960s, Dr. Young explains, feminism had a strong egalitarian streak, “and we’re fully supportive of that.” However, by the 1970s and especially into the ’80 and ’90s, “there was another development in feminism that began to see women as superior to men,” she says. That particular strand of feminism “became extremely popular” and took root in many of the women’s studies departments.

This worldview spread through the universities into “the whole range of professions, which carry these values at a professional level into society,” says Dr. Young. “They have become pervasive enough in academic, legal and political circles to pass for conventional wisdom.”

The authors expand on this in their second volume, describing how discrimination against men has now become so institutionalized that “it is best described as systemic.” Nowhere is this more evident, they argue, than in the legal system, where a double standard reigns with regard to such things as child custody and support, and accusations of sexual harassment and domestic violence.

The first book generated a smattering of interest in the media, although some journalists didn’t seem to take it very seriously, says Dr. Young. Their goal was to sensationalize the issue, “not to explore a social problem with profound moral implications.” It’s still too early to tell how the second volume will be greeted, but so far the response has been muted, she notes.

As a tenured professor with a strong publishing record, Dr. Young need not be too concerned about how her views may affect her academic standing, yet the process has not been easy. “I find that speaking out on unpopular topics, even in academia, even with its supposed freedom of speech, is a very difficult and potentially detrimental route to take,” she says.

Freedom of speech “is very vulnerable in the universities,” she adds, referring to the recent controversy over the awarding of an honorary degree by Ryerson University to McGill colleague Margaret Somerville, because the ethicist had spoken out against gay marriage. “The attempt to squash public debate is enormous, and the intimidation is enormous.”

Dr. Young hasn’t experienced any overt hostility at McGill, where she says a “culture of politeness” reigns. Nevertheless, she finds “there are very few academics who speak out on unpopular topics, maybe especially in the humanities.”

Challenging established orthodoxy could be particularly difficult for young professors. If her students were to follow her line of research, “I’d be worried for them,” she says. “Ultimately, I want to see people gainfully employed. When you’re secure and older and have nothing to lose, you’ve got more freedom to do these things.”

It’s a paradox at the heart of universities. Tenure gives academics the freedom to speak their minds, she says. Yet, “there is enough pressure to be conformist, to gain your success within a career, that . . . most people will not speak out.”

Universities, with their culture of academic freedom, civil debate and the open exchange of ideas, should celebrate the mavericks, the dissenters, the iconoclasts and the naysayers.

BS. Or is the author arguing that universities should host conferences such as the recent one in Iran that questions the Holocaust, give a voice to flat earthers, the KKK, etc. all under the banner of being tolerant of different ideas?

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This past spring the little magnolia tree in Tim Patterson's front yard produced an abundance of flowers. Ottawa is well north of the typical range for magnolias, but if the winter is relatively mild, as it was this past year, the tree does well. A harsh winter and the little tree struggles.

With the advent of global warming, you'd think Dr. Patterson's magnolia has a secure future. But Dr. Patterson, a geology professor at Carleton University, doesn't believe the Earth's climate is warming. The theory of manmade climate change due to greenhouse gases is incorrect and outdated, he says. "I don't get excited about what climate modelers are saying."

Okay, why is it incorrect? This article doesn't say.

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Dr. Patterson, whose specialty is paleoclimatology, is well aware that his views on climate change place him in a minority within the scientific community. But if he's feeling the heat, he doesn't show it. "As a scientist I can only go where the science takes me, and not where someone like David Suzuki wants me to go." When he does get criticized, it's rarely about the science, he says, but rather is an "ad hominem attack of some sort, like 'Patterson's in the pocket of Big Oil.' Well I wish!"

I'd like to criticize him on the science, but I have yet to see any of it mentioned in this article.

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Dr. Patterson may take comfort in the fact he's not entirely alone in his views. A number of colleagues share his position, including Fred Michel at Carleton, and Jan Veizer and Ian Clark at the University of Ottawa, among others. "At these [two] institutions, climate researchers who agree with my perspective on climate change actually outnumber the alarmists," he says.

So they agree with Patterson, but what is their scientific argument based on?

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What these scientists essentially agree on is that the Kyoto Protocol is pointless because carbon dioxide emissions are not driving climate change. The computer models are simply wrong and do not match actual observations.

That goes against all the research I've found. It's too bad he doesn't actually mention which models or what was being observed.

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Instead, Dr. Patterson points to solar variability -- changes in the sun's solar cycle -- as the likely culprit. The sun experiences an 11-year sunspot cycle as well as much longer cycles of solar activity, and these trends in the sun's output correlate well with temperature records dating back hundreds of years, he says.

I'd like to see the data.

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Asked how the scientific community, the media and Al Gore could get the story so wrong, Dr. Patterson says it's mainly because the debate has become so politicized. Environmental activists have taken what should be rational scientific debates and turned them into occasions for "evangelizing and antagonizing," even though "they don't really know what they're talking about."

Total dodge. He's asked about the "scientific community" and responds with some criticism of activists, who may or may not know what they're talking about.

ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that "misrepresented the science of climate change."

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group's report.

Many scientists say accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice, alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for "public information and policy research" distributed to more than 140 think-tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

But in September, the company said in response to the Royal Society that it funded groups which research "significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company." It said the groups do not speak for the company.

Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or cherry-picking facts.

Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to "create the illusion of a vigorous debate" about global warming.

Picking out excerpts: "the climate (on Mars)is the warmest it has been in decades", "without a greenhouse", "the sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing", and my favorite part: "Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015."

We will know soon enough.

--

Look to Mars for the truth on global warmingNational Post - Canada.comFriday, January 26, 2007

Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.

NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.

"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."

The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions.

"It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Dr. Abdussamatov goes further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect. "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated," he maintains. "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."

The real news from Saint Petersburg -- demonstrated by cooling that is occurring on the upper layers of the world's oceans -- is that Earth has hit its temperature ceiling. Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015. The depth of the decline in solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2040, and "will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60" lasting some 50 years, after which temperatures will go up again.

Because of the scientific significance of this period of global cooling that we're about to enter, the Russian and Ukrainian space agencies, under Dr. Abdussamatov's leadership, have launched a joint project to determine the time and extent of the global cooling at mid-century. The project, dubbed Astrometry and given priority space-experiment status on the Russian portion of the International Space Station, will marshal the resources of spacecraft manufacturer Energia, several Russian research and production centers, and the main observatory of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences. By late next year, scientific equipment will have been installed in a space-station module and by early 2009, Dr. Abdussamatov's space team will be conducting a regular survey of the sun.

With the data, the project will help mankind cope with a century of falling temperatures, during which we will enter a mini ice age.

"There is no need for the Kyoto Protocol now. It does not have to come into force until at least 100 years from no w," Dr. Abdussamatov concluded. "A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse- gas emissions."

Winter in Minnesota brings out the global warming skeptic in me. We woke today to nice sunshine, a below zero temp and -30 F 'windchill'. The forecast shows below zero temps every hour for the whole weekend coming up with -33 F windchill during the 'heat' of the day on Saturday. Not global measures, just giving context to my skepticism.

Earlier in this thread I saw both sides of the climate change debate well represented. I disclose I am no scientist, just trying to calculate the human caused component of global warming based on the imperfect science I have read so far. I never see the proponents or alarmists quantify the human element of warming, so here I give it my first shot. I recognize that all components of my math are inexact (wrong) and controversial, but they are based on the best estimates I have found, and I already disclosed my bias above. Please re-do the math with the data you trust better and post your answer to the question - at what rate is mankind warming the planet?

Estimate of total warming over the last 50 years: 0.5 degrees Celsius

Proportion of atmosphere CO2 attributable to humans: 3% (0.03)

Proportion of greenhouse effect attributable to CO2: less than 2% (0.02)

This is not in contradiction to the wording of scientists that it is very likely, with 90% certainty, that human activity is contributing to global warming.

Up go the oceans - 20 feet.

--Adding to the many skeptic questions about consensus theories, I am curious about Oxygen levels in the atmosphere:

If fossil fuel combustion destroys 2 O2 molecules for each CO2 created, and if fossil fuel combustion is the central reason we see elevated levels of CO2 (I think it isn't), why don't why see matching double depletion levels of O2 in the atmosphere? Oxygen levels have stayed amazingly steady. Any measurable oxygen depletion would certainly steal the headlines away from all other issues.

I put threads of this name on both the Politics and the S,C & H forums precisely to see what people would do

I see today's NY Times front page reports on a big study saying "There is no doubt!" and note the contrast with the seemingly most pertinent observation that Mars is heating up too-- so maybe we're not the cause after all.

The Adventure continues,Marc=================================

WHY AM I SKEPTICAL ABOUT MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING?Neal Boortz blog

A 21-page report from something called the "Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change" has been released today...in Paris, no less...and as expected, it's predictions are dire. According to the report: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea level." Yeah right...we've heard all this before.

But the biggest bombshell here is this one: no matter what we do, global warming will not be reversed. It will go on for centuries, according to this report. The sea levels will continue to rise as polar ice caps melt. So I guess if Al Gore wins his Nobel Peace Prize, we'll still experience global warming. So much for riding to work everyday in your hybrid car...it's not doing a thing. The situation is futile, according to this report.

But really, it makes sense that the global warming crowd would come to this conclusion. After all, global warming is a religion. The anti-capitalist enviro-nazis don't ever want the problem to be solved. After all, if global warming were to be solved tomorrow, what would they blame the United States for? They'd have to find some other reason.

Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare:

* The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world.

* Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists.

* Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming.

* The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars?

* It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now.

* It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age?

* How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening.* Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether.

* The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India.

* The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies.

* Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon.

* Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree.

* What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why?

* Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?"

* Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer?

* In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that.

* There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting.

* Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years.

* Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions.

* Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.

* Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today.

* During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased.

* Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man?

* Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information?

* On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph:

"As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."

Hey ... I could go on. There's much more where that came from. But I need to get ready to go on the air. Just know that many of the strongest proponents of this "man-made" global warming stuff are dedicated opponents to capitalism and don't feel all that warm and fuzzy about the United States.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:

Last night, Al Gore's global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore's mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh--more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh--guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore's average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore's extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore's mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

"As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.